How might an anarcho - primitivist future be brought about?

The sixty-four thousand dollar question! (to use a thoroughly suspect metaphor!) There are no hard-and-fast rules here, no blueprint. The glib answer - seen by some as a cop-out - is that forms of struggle emerge in the course of insurgency. This is true, but not necessarily very helpful! The fact is that anarcho-primitivism is not a power-seeking ideology. It doesn't seek to capture the State, take over factories, win converts, create political organizations, or order people about. Instead, it wants people to become free individuals living in free communities which are interdependent with one another and with the biosphere they inhabit. It wants, then, a total transformation, a transformation of identity, ways of life, ways of being, and ways of communicating. This means that the tried and tested means of power-seeking ideologies just aren't relevant to the anarcho-primitivist project, which seeks to abolish all forms of power. So new forms of action and being, forms appropriate to and commensurate with the anarcho-primitivist project, need to be developed. This is an ongoing process and so there's no easy answer to the question: What is to be done?

At present, many agree that communities of resistance are an important element in the anarcho-primitivist project. The word 'community' is bandied about these days in all kinds of absurd ways (e.g., the business community), precisely because most genuine communities have been destroyed by Capital and the State. Some think that if traditional communities, frequently sources of resistance to power, have been destroyed, then the creation of communities of resistance - communities formed by individuals with resistance as their common focus - are a way to recreate bases for action. An old anarchist idea is that the new world must be created within the shell of the old. This means that when civilization collapses - through its own volition, through our efforts, or a combination of the two - there will be an alternative waiting to take its place. This is really necessary as, in the absence of positive alternatives, the social disruption caused by collapse could easily create the psychological insecurity and social vacuum in which fascism and other totalitarian dictatorships could flourish. For the present writer, this means that anarcho-primitivists need to develop communities of resistance - microcosms (as much as they can be) of the future to come - both in cities and outside. These need to act as bases for action (particularly direct action), but also as sites for the creation of new ways of thinking, behaving, communicating, being, and so on, as well as new sets of ethics - in short, a whole new liberatory culture. They need to become places where people can discover their true desires and pleasures, and through the good old anarchist idea of the exemplary deed, show others by example that alternative ways of life are possible.

However, there are many other possibilities that need exploring. The kind of world envisaged by anarcho-primitivism is one unprecedented in human experience in terms of the degree and types of freedom anticipated ... so there can't be any limits on the forms of resistance and insurgency that might develop. The kind of vast transformations envisaged will need all kinds of innovative thought and activity.

--a primitivist primer, john moore

pigs in protest

Chicago is trying really hard to get the bid for the 2016 Olympics. Those little banner flags that go on streetlights and other city poles are everywhere advertising. The street that goes by Washington Park that used to look like the surface of the moon was just paved in a day. Of course, there's massive objection to the Olympics coming to Chicago. I don't need to get into all of those details.

What I did want to tell you about is that the International Olympics Committee is coming to town next week to evaluate Chicago. April 2 is being seen as an opportunity to gain leverage through potentially embarrassing Daley by community organizations like STOP...and the police. The Chicago Police department union- called the Fraternal Order of Police- is planning to protest Daley for rescinding a pay raise that was supposed to happen. They're going to picket city hall. I can't stop feeling thrilled at the prospect of the police picketing...it's such a glorious reversal of the way things work. I hope Daley doesn't give in before they do it.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1496807,CST-NWS-picket26.article

our parents, "raising children who will be better prepared to create peace"

haven't we all wondered why mom and dad got married?

i am sitting in mom's bed in philadelphia, looking at old photo albums. in a thick dark red burgundy one, not the one labeled "alan and robyn 1983" but another one, I find a charmingly sweet and funny narration of their wedding, scrawled in ima's handwriting, accompanying the photos.

"people already waiting; robyn hasn't changed yet."
"everyone waits in the hot sun while robyn scribbles down their vows."
"clifton tries to explain the ceremony." -- "silence." -- "silence." -- "more silence."

two long paragraphs about marriage, aka "a public statemet of our commitment ot each other" as a way to "better preserve our sense of equality," a "time in our lives where we feel it is appropriate to create a refuge from the turmoil around us...indeed, from this center we will have even more energy to reach out."

description of chupah as symbolic of community...
AND THEN
their vows.
ima's starts off with "you give me an image of a world to strive for."
dad's includes, "you let me know with love and strength that though it seems like an endless struggle i do make progress and i can achieve these goals."
dad's ENDS WITH,
"i want to marry you because i believe that together we can raise children who will be better prepared to create peace."

advice from a congresswoman: facing foreclosure? don't leave. squat.

POLITICIAN RECOMMENDS SQUATTING!!!

Zemora I want you to tell me more about squatting philosophy...is this article kind of besides the point, because 'real' squatting is when people decide to live somewhere knowing full WELL that they don't have the legal rights, and waiting to get kicked out by the law instead of waiting for a bank to find the paperwork? cool stuff either way, i think.

Amy Goodman, Wednesday, February 4, 2009

• Drug wars near and far 03.01.09

---

Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. That heartland region, the Rust Belt, had its heart torn out by the North American Free Trade Agreement, with shuttered factories and struggling family farms. Kaptur led the fight in Congress against NAFTA. Now, she is recommending a radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."

She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. Her advice to "squat" cleverly exploits a legal technicality within the subprime-mortgage crisis. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program). The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends those facing foreclosure demands of the banks.

"[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law," Rep. Kaptur told me. "Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... [if] Wall Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your home. It is your castle. It's more than a piece of property. ... Most people don't even think about getting representation, because they get a piece of paper from the bank, and they go, 'Oh, it's the bank,' and they become fearful, rather than saying: 'This is contract law. The mortgage is a contract. I am one party. There is another party. What are my legal rights under the law as a property owner?' "If you look at the bad paper, if you look at where there's trouble, 95 to 98 percent of the paper really has moved to five institutions: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held by the neck."

Kaptur recommends calling the local Legal Aid Society, Bar Association or 888-995-4673 for legal assistance.

The onerous duty of physically evicting people and dragging their possessions to the curb typically falls on the local sheriff. Kaptur conditions her squatting advice, saying, "If it's a sheriff's eviction, if it's reached that point, that is almost impossible." Unless the sheriff refuses to carry out the eviction, as Sheriff Warren C. Evans of Wayne County, Mich., has decided to do. Wayne County, including Detroit, has had more than 46,000 foreclosures in the past two years.

After reviewing TARP, Evans determined that home foreclosures would conflict with TARP's goal of reducing foreclosures, and that he'd be violating the law by denying foreclosed homeowners the chance at potential federal assistance. "I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their home until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure," he said.

Bruce Marks of the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America is taking the fight to the homes of the banks' CEOs. Last October, as the TARP bailout was shaping up to benefit Wall Street and not Main Street, NACA blockaded the entrance of mortgage giant Fannie Mae until it got a meeting with executives there. Now NACA is working with Fannie Mae to restructure mortgages. Marks is organizing a nationwide, three-day "Predator's Tour," going to the CEOs' homes to demand meetings with them. He told me: "This is what we're going to do with thousands of homeowners, go to their (the CEOs') home and say: 'I want you to meet my family. I want you to see who you're foreclosing on.' ... If they're going to take our homes, we're going to go to their homes, and we're going to tell them, 'No more.' "

Before the inauguration, Larry Summers, the chair of President Obama's National Economic Council, promised congressional Democratic leaders to "implement smart, aggressive policies to reduce the number of preventable foreclosures by helping to reduce mortgage payments for economically stressed but responsible homeowners, while also reforming our bankruptcy laws and strengthening existing housing initiatives."

According to a report by RealtyTrac, "Foreclosure filings were reported on 2.3 million U.S. properties in 2008, an increase of 81 percent from 2007 and up 225 percent from 2006." As the financial crisis deepens, people facing foreclosure should take Kaptur's advice and tell their bankers, "Produce the note."

-sfgate.com

first hour in pr

On the plane, my seatmate, an old woman with heavily manicured nails, each fingertip topped with a raised plastic flower and rhinestone sparkes, asked if it was my first time visiting the island. She said, "Bienvenidos. You are going to see a beautiful land."...
I stepped out of the airport into the 80 degree sunshine. Somehow, Pati found me, even though I still didn't have her cell phone number. We saw Mary through the glass window and waved excitedly. Having had no idea what to expect of my future housemate, I was relieved to see that her only baggage was a dingy hiking backpack just like mine. We smiled and hugged, and hopped into the backseat of Pati's friend Pedro's car. She knew him from Bread and Puppet. After shifting around a pair of stilts that jutted out from the trunk into the backseat, we settled in. They talked in rapid spanish, once in a while translating a sentence or two here and there, as we stared out the windows, taking in the scenery with wide eyes, not believing the palm trees and incredible warmth. We drove to Viejo San Juan, the most touristy part of the metro area, to have lunch at a place called El Jibarito's. I've heard jibaro translated various ways, as farmer, worker of the land, hillbilly, mountain person...more on that later. I ordered chicken, arroz con habichuelas, and amarillos, sweet yellow plantains.
We talked about the economic crisis... "Finally its happening! This time it wasn't Che, it wasn't Fidel, believe me, man, we really tried...This time, they are bringing themselves down!" Pedro ordered flan for the four of us to split for dessert. It came topped with a frilly swirl of whipped cream and a bright red mereschino cherry on top. He poked at the whipped cream with his fork, a disappointed expression on his face. "The cook, she worked hard to make this flan taste good. It doesn't need this shit on top. What an insult." He scraped the whipped cream and the cherry off the flan, into a corner of the plate. "This whipped cream, this is because of el turismo," he said in disgust.

the good old days

We went to a lecture on Friday about music throughout South Africa's history at the University of Cape Town. The audience was mostly older, white people. The lecturer talked, among other things, about how music enabled resistance to apartheid. He played us clips that gave me goosebumps. One involved a lone female voice ululating. During questions, a white-haired lady commented, "That last one--it reminded me of the old days on the farm. The woman who sorted potatoes used to sing like that. And really, it was about the together-ness of it all."

A few minutes later, he played a song that nearly brought tears to my eyes. The words were those of a slave or maid, telling her female master, "Instead of asking me how your children are, why don't you ask me how I lost mine?"

"I wonder," said my friend Jill, "if that one reminds her of her days on the farm?"

not to be found in a popular american newspaper?

Excerpts from "Yesterday, today, and tomorrow," By Binyavanga Wainaina, in the January 16 Mail and Guardian (the "skill" referred to in the second-to-last paragraph is things like musical-instrument playing):

“You lie down, skin peeled and naked, according to the policy of your government, and its international advisors, and expose yourself to global overheating. Legs spread and your nutrients draining, you are asked, quite politely, to wait for the thrust of foreign investment and the caress of money markets. Even on the day your city burns, and drought makes you beg for food, Paris Hilton manages to make her way to the forefront of your consciousness; suntanned, legs wide, teeth gleaming like the Nobel prize for globally successful people.

A dollar for your day lands in your lap, and you think: I am cold today. Let me go inside this shop and buy one giant fake silver US dollar medallion. International Monetary Physics has told you that the reflection from this light blinging around your chest as you sit naked, will provide some heat.

Life is banned, the community hall closed. You are asked to shut down all brain activity that does not have to do with the market that is coming in 2030, when the road arrives.

Primary school is a giant slot machine. You thrust you children inside, like coins, 10-million of them, and there is room in high school for 10,000. Ten of them will see the Promised Land by becoming members of Parliament, the highest earning people in your country. I was once like you, said one last year. Just stay there in the sun.

To belong to a civilization is to take all your nation’s bodies and ready them for the open market. The open market comes in at a profit of 3% a year, rises to 6%. Then every 10 years or so, five years of progress is wiped out. This is the only way to live. While all of this is happening, you may occasionally need to eat our Swedish-designed supernutritious soyadriedfishpowdered milk gruel, out of a tube, while you wait for the annual 3% to trickle down. Your cut is disbursed by your elected officials, every five years during election time, when a panga is given to you, a fist of shillings and you are told, by the same guy who told you to life down naked, that you are oppressed, and you need to act. Ha. This you know.

You live in Kenya, or South Africa—the lands of the future tense…

Life is not about waiting to produce things to consume, and life is not lived in the future tense; and those who lie about this are waiting for a terrible Armageddon. You have heard that in some places this sort of skill, built upon from the local pasts of people, from skills from other places, is taught in schools and community centres. Because it is a human thing to do. Those places have refused to give up their present tense, for a future civilization. If both are not possible, it is not worth our time, they say. They are not just waiting to become international consumers.

Those countries do this, because to care for the present tense has been said to be a good thing for sanity, for dignity. It has been said, too, that this sort of thing separates animals from human beings.”

Hello loves,

I hope all is well. I'm sorry I haven't posted yet since I've been here! This is some unfinished reflection from last week. I have since learned a lot more, it is just not in writing yet.


From the moment we stepped off the airplane, there were nameless black people in reflective yellow jackets sitting on the ground in the shade under the ledge of the airport where the bags come in and riding the shuttle from plane to gate. Everyone on the flight was not black, though I realize now a few were colored.

My first views of the city itself were the same. I'm staying in Tamboerskloof, a definitely exclusive and white neighborhood. There is barbed wire atop cement walls around most houses, and pictures of security dogs. We were warned we could get shot if we ever tried to scale the wall if locked out. Many of the stores, especially things like fast food, have only white patrons and only black workers. On our drive the first day we went through Camps Bay, and past a stretch of restaurants on the beach at which every single waiter and waitress was black, and all the diners white. It was so strange at first I felt nauseated, and nervous all the time. We went to Woolworth’s, the grocery store, and looked at delicious prepared foods, wide varieties of chocolate and liquor, beautiful produce and beautiful white people. The cashiers were black. I felt nervous. All I bought was phone credit, and I didn’t know how.

A hundred and ten rand, she said. I didn’t want to break two hundreds so I asked Emma if she had ten cents. Both women cashiers looked uncomfortable and tried to explain my mistake. A rand cent is so small that they hadn’t even been present in my mind; all I meant was a ten rand coin. I think the cashiers know how to spend a rand cent.
At the fast-food chicken place Nando’s, where we went for lunch, the nervousness got me again. “Hot or mild?” asked the black woman taking my order. “Yeah, sounds great” I said. It wasn’t a yes or no.

It's so disconcerting, and yet I can feel myself already getting used to it. Living in Cape Town as a white student for a short amount of time seems to mean a whole lot of bourge-fest.